Milena Velba 2009 Colection

Creativity and Collaboration (Part I)

in recent years in my research I have dealt with some continuità di creatività, un tema ovviamente centrale nel dibattito sull’imprenditorialità. L’ho fatto cercando di sfatare la dominante visione solipsistica che alimenta il mito del creativo geniale e solitario. Ovviamente è più facile identificarsi in questo ideale di eroe romantico che esalta qualità straordinarie di inventori, artisti e imprenditori (che entrano immediatamente nell’immaginario collettivo). L’evidenza scientifica tuttavia sempre più spesso offre una visione che si discosta, talora diametralmente, da questo ideale.

Randall Collins, uno dei massimi sociologi americani viventi, ha condotto uno studio enciclopedico su questo tema ricostruendo the careers of some of the most important scientists, artists and philosophers in the Western and Eastern civilizations. These include Beethoven, Darwin, Freud, Hume, Einstein and many others.

Collins meticulously shows how almost all of these individuals are united by belonging to rich social networks that included other scientists, thinkers and artists with whom exchanged ideas and knowledge through processes of competition and collaboration. Recent evidence shows that appeared in Science in the social sciences then as much as in the natural cooperation is increasingly important processes at the base of scientific productivity. Wuchty, Jones & Uzzi (2007) for example, have shown that in almost all domains in the average size of disciplinary research team over the past 45 years has approximately doubled (see figure below).

The growing importance of teams in the production of knowledge

Not only that, the papers that are the result of collaborations on average receive more attention and citations than the individual. E 'are more likely a breakthrough, that is a job to exceptionally high impact, is the result of a collaboration that not a single author. In another study recent Lee Fleming, a research and innovation management at Harvard University, has reconstructed a map of collaboration that underlies the innovation produced by Silicon Valley (I've repeated below) coming to similar considerations.

The network of collaboration between the inventors of Silicon Valley

Fleming, Lee, and Adam Juda. "A Network of Invention", Harvard Business Review 82, no. 4

Even in subject areas by their nature easily associated to the solipsistic view of the creative genius, such such as painting, music or poetry or collaborative social component is often much more central than they imagined. I recommend the excellent book on the subject of historian Michael Farrell Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work , which offers a rich series of collaborative creativity that are among the other writers such as Lewis, Tolkien, the Fugitives group of poets and leading figures of French Impressionism.

So why the social dimension so important? Essentially for two reasons. First, because the creative work invariably involves the recombination of material, ideas and background, access to which is, at least in part, regulated by social networks in which individuals are embedded. Second, because the fruits of any creative effort, as radical and innovative can not succeed without a receptive community that would justify the pioneering efforts by facilitating access to resources (symbolic and / or materials) needed to create. And 'why it is difficult to understand the source of innovations and ideas regardless of social context, the structure of partnerships and networks in which these ideas emerge and assert themselves. Personally, I applied and tested these ideas in the context of Hollywood cinema. In Part II of this post will try to explain how I did it and with what results. See you soon!